Fly High
Summary: Sun and wings and wind and a blue sky. She might be growing up but she'll be alright… Maybe, some day. OneShot.
Warning: 30 minute-challenge because it's late.
Set: Post-whatever-comes-after-Angel, future fic
Disclaimer: Standards apply.
Golden warmth and blue sky and infinity.
Every time Max extends her wings for the sole sake of flying she wonders how the world can be the same every day and yet change so much. She wonders why people don't see it – the expanse of sky, the beauty of the world. God neither is a concept she learned to respect nor believes in but sometimes, she guesses, those believers have a point. The snow-topped mountains, the red and golden desert, the blue lakes and green rivers. The flowers, the trees, the animals… How, just how can people take this for granted?
But then, normal human beings never will see the world the way she sees it.
Harsh cries alert her as the flock of birds passes her. Cranes, on their way north. In the afternoon sunlight they pass by her, unfazed, and the sunrays color them silver, color them white, make their plumage shine like sunlight in a drop of water. The air all around her is alive with their calls and Max watches them dance, drifting and flapping, floating and diving and returning again. They are beautiful, with their awkward grace and their ignorance of everything that happens around them. Instead they follow the map in their minds, to the north and back, without ever having once been there before. The map is engraved into their memories, passed on from parents to children. They know exactly where they belong.
She never knew such a thing and probably never will.
Her heart beat quickens as she watches the birds pass. The wind that passes through the feathers of her huge wings is cooling and soft, caresses her heated cheeks and rips at her hair. It already is a mess again, her mother shouldn't have bothered to entangle it in the first place. But they have developed a routine, and for the girl who never had a mother and now only sees her a few days a month and for the mother who almost got killed and who loves her daughter but never sees her, it is the best routine they can settle on. And even if Max wouldn't have liked it she wouldn't have stopped it. She knows Iggy enjoys spending time with Ella every once so often and Nudge loves to read herself through Ella's magazines and books. Angel, Gazzy, Total and his wife spend time in the garden while Dylan helps in the house. Today he has started to try to mend a broken cupboard in the basement. He is Mr. Perfect alright. Which woman hasn't dreamed for a man who can cook and clean and mend?
And Max flies.
Ella thinks she feels restless. Dylan suspects she is still yearning for Fang. Gazzy and Iggy make fun of her because she can't calm down while they stay with her mother and half-sister. Nudge is worried, at least when she remembers to be. And Angel accepts it as a fact, as simple as it is. She cannot read Max' mind anymore. Max has learned to throw up walls. But as much as she loves her siblings, and as much as they know her, nobody is able to tell exactly why she spends so much time outside. Riding the thermals, listening to the wind in her hair. Watching the world.
Yeah. Obviously, the world hasn't perished yet.
They have saved it, even if they still aren't quite sure how it worked out. It did, that is all that matters. It won't die tomorrow and not the day after tomorrow and not next week. For the future further up the road, Max isn't sure what it will be about. Humans still dirty and hurt the planet and there are too many injuries as to recover completely ever again. The world is doomed to die, but not soon. If people continue to take care, if they really manage to watch out for each other and for their planet, it might take centuries, thousands, even a million of years. And all of them – Angel and Dylan and Nudge and Gazzy and Angel and Max, and Fang and Mara and all the other kids – are part of a new generation. Not part of the mutant freak generation, or part of the human-avian-whatever-else-hybrids, or part of the save-the-world-generation. They are the new children, nothing more and nothing less. A new generation which has learned to learn. Learned to watch, to listen and to act.
Max looks down onto green fields filled with golden sunflowers and feels like crying.
This has to be a side-effect of her growing up because she can't remember ever having felt something like this. Her heart swells at the sight. There is no reason for it, really none. It's just the beauty of the world lying folded out for her to see, the vastness of the landscape, the multitude of shades and colors. She is alive, incredibly so, and she feels it in every fiber of her being. Alive, her blood sings. Alive, her heart whispers. Alive.
Really.
Max cannot fathom how people can live and never lift their eyes to look at their surroundings. The beauty is breathtaking. Why has she never noticed it before? Was she too occupied? Too busy running, fighting and saving the world, probably. Too busy to find out where the voice in her head came from. Too busy tracking down their parents. Too busy fighting evil scientists. Too busy loving Fang, missing Fang, hating Dylan, hating Fang, loving Dylan, too busy worrying about Nudge and Angel, too busy caring for Iggy and Gazzy. Too busy searching for her mother, too busy saving the world. Too busy to live. Too busy to fly just for the sake of flying.
Now, as the world stretches out underneath her, she smiles.
Somewhere, down there, Dylan is waiting for her. Nudge will be in the living-room, on the sofa with a fashion magazine. Iggy and Ella will be on the terrace. Angel and Gazzy will enter from the garden, full of dirt and sweat and of happiness and adventures. And her mother will welcome her home with chocolate chip cookies, which still are her absolute favorite, and a warm meal, and with ten minutes only for the two of them before she goes to bed. Max always knew she was special. But suddenly her heart jumps at the thought of what she has, how much she has. She is blessed, really and truly. She is happy. And even if she thought that, after Fang, she never would feel that way again – here she is, and she is fine.
Where Fang might be right now?
She knows he is fine. She knows because she feels him, because he still is a part of her. He always will be. They shared so much – their first flight, their narrow escapes, their worries, their doubts. They shared happiness and fear. Fang is her best friend and always will be her first love. She can feel him, in the small piece of her heart that forever will belong to him. He is okay, wherever he is. And she wishes him happiness, everything he wants to have, everything he ought to have because he is amazing. In every aspect. Dylan is amazing, too, but in a different way. There is no way to compare those two boys she loves so much because they are absolutely unique, absolutely different, and they never will be alike.
The world is beautiful.
It has nothing to do with its people or their achievements. The earth is beautiful, full of green valleys and blue lakes and perfect skies. Her heart is a steady beat in her ears as she stares and stares and cannot get enough. How people can pass this every day without marveling at the beauty is beyond her. But she has changed, so maybe those people first will have to change first, too. Maybe they won't ever see it. Maybe it's an attribute of her generation, of the new children, that they are able to see the beauty in their surroundings every day anew. Every day she wakes and her heart sings. Safe. Alive. Fine.
She gets the uncomfortable feeling that she is turning mushy.
But as long as she only does it up high in the sky, when nobody is watching, she is fine with it. She has changed so much she can't even say when it happened. She is growing, slowly becoming what she always feared to become, and she cannot help it. She doesn't feel older. She doesn't even look older, or so her mother told her. Maybe that is her fate: a person, aged too fast, in the body of a person who ages too slowly. But right now, what does it matter? Exhilarated, she lowers her arms and dives, falls towards the ground at breathtaking speed. She catches herself, turns, dances, feeling the wind in her hair and the warmth of the sun on her face. Her wings carry her upwards again, towards the endless sky. She could spend weeks up here, years probably.
But gravitation is undefeatable when it pulls with the force of so many loved ones.
Still she remains for a few more precious minutes. She dances, light as a feather on a breeze. She drifts like the cranes, up and down and swirling in the irregular and yet incredibly beautiful pattern that is life. It's an ancient dance, older than time, and she doesn't know the steps but she feels it in her blood. The hills and the vales expand into endlessness, a beautiful piece of art. Ephemeral, as everything in life is, and for that reason the more precious. Max swirls in graceful, expanding circles, trying to drink in the beauty of the world. She never is sated but the world is new every day, after all.
Everything she loves is safe.
She will return soon, will land on the soft, green grass in front of the house and find the front door open. She will enter the kitchen with its wonderful smell of cookies and dinner. She will see Nudge, small and delicate, and Angel, almost as tall as Gazzy now but still the blonde angel she always would be. She will see Iggy and Ella, Gazzy and Mum. And Dylan. Of course, Dylan. Max smiles. She never thought time would heal wounds and really, it hasn't. But it has added another layer to her, has given her another skin to grow into, and to her great surprise she has found it fit. It shouldn't be possible. Life shouldn't go on, people shouldn't leave and appear again and leave. Seasons shouldn't pass. Time shouldn't flow. But it does, everything does, and life is a sum of all of those things. She might be growing up but she'll be alright…
Maybe, some day.
A few late cranes watch as the spec that was a human with wings just like theirs from up close lands in the garden down down there and disappears. They know, the girl – woman? – has entered the house. But in her heart, she will always fly with them.
Fly high. Fly on.